Some More Snowboarding

For a period of time, Nana was very excited about graduation trips. My guess is that it signifies the end of A levels and the freedom to travel with friends and without parents. In her excitement, she has agreed and bought tickets for 2 grad trips. She is heading to Hong Kong in December with a few of her secondary friends and to Taiwan in January with her JC friends. Where is the $$ coming from? Savings and partial loan from yours truly. The kids will also get some monetary incentives for their grad trip if they meet the agreed expectations for A and O levels. That is to say, she is spending future $$.

Anyway, she has regretted about the Hong Kong trip. It is with friends that she isn’t close with or keep in regular contact now. I think it was the fomo and grad trip vibes that got into her head then. Then, mummy came to the rescue. I never miss a chance to travel and I want to go Shenzhen to snowboard again! 

Bcos it is HKG, Zaky wants to go bcos he wants to go to Disneyland. Since we are all going, Daddy Lim might as well tag along. Yay! Another trip planned! Snowboarding again! 

I am so worried that I would lose my snowboarding skills. Since the Shenzhen trip, I have gone back to the open session once. It is the school holidays and I asked if Nana is keen to join me. Let’s go! Her last time on Snowmonster slope was a long time ago. 

Bcos the year is ending and every other person is learning skiing or snowboarding for their snow holiday, the Snowmonster classes are very packed. Almost every other class is full. That means barely getting 15 mins out of the supposedly 1 hour class. I still have 24 lessons in my package and didn’t want to take classes with so many people. That was when I realised that the package can be used for open sessions, just that I would end up paying more when using the package than paying direct. Hmmm.. better than paying direct and then also wasting the package right? 

Nana and I were at Snowmonster on Tuesday 6pm for our open sessions. I think there is over-usage. Everything in Snowmonster feels like they are breaking down. The boots feel wonky, the elastic for the guards are getting loose, the cushion in their helmets is disintegrating, the bindings on their snowboard is not holding properly. Even the enoki on their slope are getting botak. I hope Snowmonster is replacing as needed. 

Snowmonster is having their school holiday camp for little kids now. Nana said that so many kids were rolling around the slope when she arrived. We got to use the big slope when then kids finally cleared out. 

One of the instructors who once taught us was free and stayed back for a good 20 mins to look at us. She gave us some advices too. Actually, I was super frustrated after I last attended her class. She taught a different technique from the previous instructor and then there wasn’t enough time to practice and so I lost my J turns. Of course I didn’t tell her. Haha. She remembers us but thought that she last taught us about a month ago and was surprised that we can already linked our turns. I am quite sure it had been much longer than a month. Nevertheless, the truth is that the self practice during open sessions really help.

Anyhow, we didn’t lose our turns. Hoho. The instructor commented that we are quite steady in our turns. I asked her what else to learn and were told to try to turn faster and not hover for too long after completing a turn, 

In this photo, I looked so pro. But actually I was falling down. Hahahaha.

I want to go snowboarding on snow. 

Mummy Lim

Everybody needs New Glasses

It was Nana who triggered and said that she needed new glasses bcos her current pair is so scratched. The kids do wear contact lenses but Nana is on her glasses more often than Zaky. 

They had been on Hoya myopic control lenses since they were in Primary school. The lenses are really expensive and each pair of their glasses used to cost $400, then inflated to $550 along the years. I hated it when they made remarks like “I can’t see clearly”, bcos that could mean $500+ flying away. The fortunate thing is that the Hoya lenses really helped and their eyesight had been stable for many years. If there is a need to change glasses, it is usually bcos the lenses are scratched, then they grew bored of the “look” and wanted new look. Checking back the blog posts, I think the last time the kids changed their glasses was back in March 2024. 

It had been 2.5 years. Nana had been bugging for new glasses. She said that her lenses are so scratched. Instead of the usual Hoya and JP optical shop, I thought maybe we can now do the Lenskart type. They are already in their late teens/ early adulthood, their eyes should be stable right? I took the chance to change out my old flower glasses lenses too. I think my eyes have deteriorated. My glasses are also from Lenskart and changing lenses only cost $20. I am officially moving to +150. #oldpeopleproblem Cannot see means cannot see, don’t try to fight and pretend. Lol. 

Nana was happily selecting her frame and there is a one-for-one promo, so Zaky got interested too. 

Buy lah, buy lah. 

Both their eyesight got worse. I duno if it is bcos it is a different optical shop and have different testing standards or they are both going blind(er). 

Zaky’s.

Nana’s.

Nana has a really bad eye. A problem that we knew since she was little and thankfully Hoya lenses managed to keep the eyesight stable. In the future, she shall earn $$ and hopefully get lasik. 

Eventually, they went slightly lower in power. I asked the optician if that damages that eyesight but she said that it really depends on how comfortable the users are before deciding what degrees for the lenses. 

The optician also said that eyesigh only stablises in the 20s and advised us to also get the myopic control lenses. We had to pay $270 more for the lenses. At least 2 pair of glasses now cost $470, cheaper than a single pair of Hoya. I really hope that the Lenskart glasses and so called myopic lenses don’t spoil their eyes. 

Mummy Lim

Battle with the Ants

Rio is a matured establishment and naturally pest could be a possible issue. The saving grace is that we rarely cook and thus there isn’t much food lying around. The Chis are usually hungry and their food got hobbled up quickly too. 

I haven’t seen any big roaches (Choy!), thought we encountered a couple of lizards. But, the ants had been a problem. A few months after we moved in, we had the ants problem, which went away after we set up the ant trap/ bait. What we are more worried about, is Mochi eating the ant trap, and we poison him instead of the ants. So, the ants traps have to be in strategic places that are in the ants track, yet in areas that we think Mochi wouldn’t get them. Actually, I think Mochi is just clever enough not to eat the traps. Heng ah. 

The ants problem has come back. We lived with it for a while, then realised that we needed to do something about it bcos they are increasing in numbers. They were all crawling towards the aircon in the living room and they didn’t come out after that. Did they build a nest in the aircon? 

We found the balance of the ant bait and tried to place them on the ants track. This time, it didn’t work. I think the baits are from too long ago and have lost its effectiveness. I see the ants happily eating the gel in the bait but the number of ants didn’t decrease. Ironically, they increased. Maybe the gel made them stronger. Zzzz.

The problem had become so bad, that we know that it is time to get new ant trap. We opted for the gel form this time.

According to the instructions, this is good for cracks and crevices. We tried this before back in Bukit Panjang and it was effective. 

Daddy Lim was very generous in dotting along the ants track. I kept stopping his generosity bcos I don’t want to kill the Chis. Within minutes, the ants swarmed the gel. 

Yes, the ants problem was so bad. It looked so gross. I have to tell myself to ignore and not to look at the spots. 

This morning, the places where we placed the gel were left with small yellow stains, which we cleaned away. Miraculously, the ants are almost gone! Hooray! We won the battle! 

The Chis are very much alive too. 

I don’t want to jinx it; I had thought that it would take longer for the problem to go away. I really hope that this is it. Fighting! 

Mummy Lim